Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was introduced in the fifteenth century to assist in the increasing exploration of the 'New World'. Greenwich was selected as the home for the Royal Observatory, its aim was to improve navigation at sea. By establishing an accurate time it became possible to discover the exact position of the ship. However GMT was not adopted by the British Parliament as the national time system until 1880. Four years later it became universally accepted at the International Meridian conference, a step which saw the creation of the International Date Line and 24 time zones.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is almost identical to GMT. However whereas GMT is based on the rotation of the earth, UTC is derived from the comparison of a number of atomic time scales from laboratories around the world. The definition of a second was also originally based on the earth's rotation, but in 1967 began to use atomic time. A second is currently defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom". UTC officially replaced GMT as the world standard time in 1986.

All clocks from Universal Time come equipped with precision Master Clocks that are regulated by the UTC Time Code, guaranteeing absolute accuracy and reliability.